Visual delight

Madonna says:

"If you can't say, 'I will die if I don't do it,' then you shouldn't do it," she says of shooting for the stars.

About 1999, Jesse Jackson fathered a baby out of wedlock.

So, I didn't know this - maybe I had my head up my ass at the time. (The news came out around the time I graduated college so I was probably freaking out about something else at that time.)

Anyhoo, given Jesse Jackson's seeming distaste for Obama, maybe he's just oversensitive. Maybe JJ is projecting his own guilt and shame from the past onto Obama's comments. Sure, it was while ago, but JJ's daughter is probably about 9 years old now and likely becoming ever more aware of the world around her, so it's not like he or the rest of his family has the luxury to forget and move on. He lives with his choice everyday.

Obviously, it is ironic that he would be upset about Obama telling fathers to be more accountable to their children. Sounds to me like Mr. Jackson has some inner turmoil going on.

To interpret him positively would be to say he is a conflicted but ultimately honorable man who may be haunted by the demons of his tumultuous beginnings, having also been born out of wedlock and into poverty himself.

A negative slant would be that he is a big, hypocritical slut (sorry, I think this word should be de-feminized) who can't keep it in his pants and found the best way to curry favor with the public was to come clean - both when the news of his affair/child broke and now. First rule of PR is to acknowledge wrongdoing and then indicate what steps are being taken to remedy the situation. (And btw, America never gets tired of this routine.)

Of course the "truth" is somewhere in the middle.

Heh heh

Telemarketing outsourced to India?

Sitting here at a large US corporation, I just got a call from a telemarketer asking to speak with my HR department. Generally this is not remarkable.

In this specific instance, it was however. I'm pretty sure the call came from India - you all know the telltale clues - the accent combined with the hum of a large call center in the background.

I can't prove it on just this one example (though I'm sure a quick Google search would help), but I'll speculate that telemarketing has now been outsourced, too.

The Secret to Happiness is...

Downward social comparison.



Discuss

Martin Luther King, "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam"

Age

It's where we're all headed. It's what brought me to this blog. Yet we're afraid of it. 

Why are we afraid of the old? I see the young all the time, but the old are often kept inside. We don't bring them out to play - they aren't part of the fabric of our daily life. 

Is it the vulnerability? A reminder of our own frailty? Of the reality of our very precarious existence? The old, the slow and the chronically ill... how do they make you feel when you see them? 

I'm guilty of this fear, especially lately. It's very personal - I am not untouched ...

I guess I feel like thinking about your own mortality is can be horrifying if you don't already have a philosophy to address the difference between life and death.  Maybe that's why we don't want to go there in our minds. 

Perhaps we have lost sight of the value of the old. I don't understand all the forces that have made this so but I want to die in community, a society even, that values the old. I don't want to be cast aside or isolated during my wait to die. 

Giddy on Life Over Death Day (for some of us)

I'm giddy, though it's slightly subdued due to a chocolate Easter bunny induced sugar crash - I just sent my first invoice ever to my first client ever. 

Neat milestone in the first year of Decade Four. Me likey.

-Happy Day of Remembering That Which is Spiritually Significant to You or Your Particular Religious Persuasion or Lack Thereof.

Do me a favor (random peeve)

If you live in a condo or apartment complex and have a deck, don't grill on it. One of my pet peeves is idiots starting fires.

Is this post out of left field? 

Yes.

Do I care?

No.

Fa fa fa fa... this one's for the francophiles

Why Is Prostitution Illegal?

So, in light of Elliot Spitzer's recent foibles, Slate wrote this article. A couple of years ago I read Callgirl: Confessions of an Ivy League Lady of Pleasure and I came away feeling very strongly that prostitution should be legalized. 

No one really seemed interested in debating the topic with me, probably because most of my peers aren't terribly scandalized by the thought of prostitution. 

So, this Slate article, "Why Is Prostitution Illegal" made me feel a bit like I was finally having a chat with someone about the issue. It takes a relatively even-handed look at the subject while remaining short and easily digested. 

Enjoy

Interesting headline in front of me given the last post...

Not that Amtrak is run by the Port Authority of NY but the guy sitting across from me is reading the WSJ and the headline right in my face says:

"Train pulls out on new corner of debt market

Auction-rate securities failing to draw bidders;  a toll on port authority"

On the train...

So, I try to keep a good attitude but at the moment I think a word about something is appropriate. 

I love Amtrak don't get me wrong but in this case their service is well, a disservice. I've finally managed to procure a seat in the food car after boarding the train an hour ago. Now, it doesn't bother me that I didn't get a seat I paid about $100 for but in the case of the family sitting nearby I'd have to say they really deserve to be as pissed as the mother seems to be. Basically, the poor woman, her husband and her probably age 7 daughter have a seat finally, but it's in the food car.

What if they had been traveling with and an elderly person? A sick person maybe? 

It seems the conductor has gone out of his way to accommodate the family but of course his options are limited. I feel bad for them but I would've been pretty pissed if it was me. Ah well, maybe it's just another side effect of the shrinking economy.

Maybe we'll send our jobs to economies with cheaper labor and then one day they'll give us the gift of train travel a la their style?

I very much support globalization but I believe domestic macro capitalistic powers (I won't pretend to be an economist here - that is a term I made up and understand ... sorry if it doesn't mean anything to you ...) anyway... will show the true value, or lack thereof, of the American dollar through their increasingly poor delivery of services and goods.

So I believe wealth is leaving the United States... can't prove it... just a hunch (hello rising price and diminishing supply of oil, weakening dollar, increasing cost of real estate...)

I can't claim original thought on these ideas... I'm heavily influenced by a few sources - a book called "The World is Flat", a documentary called "The End of Suburbia" and a few others as well as some other context clues derived from watching the world... 

Dunno... just a  thought...

On the road...

Okay, here's something I've always wanted to do - blog while moving. Yup blog while in transit and so have I fulfilled one of those goals right here and now. As I thee write, I'm chinatown busing it from Philly to NYC. I wish I had a pic to show you but I'm so excited about the blogging I can't stop for a second to take a photo my dear pups.

So, as each year has passed since graduating college I've become increasingly cautious and prone to worry. Thus, I became less and less likely to take such things as transportation that is probably run without insurance. However, being away from my day-to-day routine takes me out of the cycle of worry and thus when my dear pal suggested taking the C-town bus because it was quicker and cheaper than the alternative Greyhound, I didn't really hesitate. 

We said our quick and half-sorrowful good-bye on the street (we know we'll see each other soon but of course we want to hang out and chat forever- but I have a mere weekend and some partying in NYC to do and she has  play to act in) and so we part. Her boyfriend, whom I've just met, grabs me a cab and off I go.

I thought my cab driver might kill me because he had a tendency to... well, how should I say it? Mmmmm, bark. Yes, he was much the barker. 

"WHERE?!!?!" He growled deeply. 

"11th and Cherry" I bleated. 

"CHERRY?!?!" He growled even more deep and ferocious. 

I really couldn't tell if he was deaf, raging or mean. 

"READY?!?" He boomed, staring straight ahead. 

"yes" I said, very much doubting the truth of my response.

And so we were off. Miraculously I arrived at my destination, which proceeded to perplex me, even if only momentarily. I was on the corner of two streets in Philly's Chinatown, but there didn't appear to be any buses. But soldier on I did once I observed the half Chinese half English sign for the Cherry bus (I laugh here at my soccer mom self, like I've never been by myself in the city before - what is more, like I've ever been a soccer mom before :) 

I go in to buy the ticket but there doesn't seem to be anyone behind the counter in the near empty room with just a few old office chairs strewn about the once white linoleum floor. Suddenly, a Chinese kid about age 15, started asking, "New York" to the few who had gathered inside and just outside the door. "Come on," he said. "We have to go down the street."

No one hesitated, they all just followed. So, I did too. What can you do? Down the sidewalk, behind the building, to the right an open van full of boxes with plastic hanging out, to the left, a parking lot of broken down cars. We keep going up yet another small parking lot behind another set of buildings, and there's a bus at the end - he let me pay once I got on - no big deal. "One way?" He asked and yet also told me. Not sure how he knew I was going one way only...

And, so I'm on the bus. Just a few moments ago, at a gas stop, the driver asked the eight or so of us on this bus, exactly where we are going. And once he took a tally, which at first I think confused everyone, he decided where he was going to stop. I can hear him now yammering away in Chinese on his wireless headset as he protectively delivers us to the city.

This is far better than those Peter Pan bus drivers who used to bark at me in college for bringing a slice of pizza on the bus. No rules about talking on your cell phone, no need to print out your ticket beforehand, or really to even have one at all. I can spread out over two seats (or four if I really wanted - the bus is only 1/8 full - I get free Chinese lessons the whole way there - The couple next to me chatters happily about visiting Ground Zero... it's pretty good. And all this for just ten bucks.